 to this discussion of Guantanamo at 20, the 20th anniversary of the opening of the detention camp at Guantanamo. David Sermon, who helped organize this event, points out that this is the 13th year we've had this event, as far as we can tell from the records that exist, it may even have gone on longer than that. But that's the first evidence you could find of this event, which is, so here we are 20 years later with three of the world's leading experts on the subject to discuss the issue. First, Cameron Greenberg, who wrote the least-wares place the first 100 days at Guantanamo, amongst many other books, including her most recent book, Subtle Tools. Then Andy Worthington, who wrote the book, Guantanamo Files, which was really the first effort to find out who exactly was at Guantanamo, what their stories were. And finally, Tom Wilner, who was the counsel for two of the most important legal cases in decades. One is Resoul versus Bush, which was essentially that we can't just let people disappear. It's a rather old kind of legal principle. The right to habeas corpus, and then also in Oday versus the United States, the right to legal counsel. So each panelist is gonna make some brief opening remarks, and then we're gonna have a conversation, and then we'll throw it open to questions. So, Karen, who is also the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University, and also a fellow at New America, we're gonna start Karen with you. Thank you. No, thank you, Peter, and I'm really delighted to be here, at least to be here with Tom and Andy. I don't know if Tom remembers, but you're one of the first people I talked to about Guantanamo in the early days, well more than 13 years ago, I might add. And today's panel is, what is the future? And even the question worries me, because really, I guess the question is, what is the future as opposed to what should it be? What the future is, if the past tells us, is a series of incremental attempts at pushing forward two things at Guantanamo that are necessary to close it. One is the military commissions, and the other is the release of prisoners who haven't been charged and won't be charged, the forever prisoners, as Carol Rosenberg turned them so long ago. And I think really what we've learned over time is that incrementalism doesn't necessarily work, that some kind of very broad strokes that are brave and that recognize at Guantanamo, absolutely it has to come to an end. And the reasons are numerous, but let, and I'm sure Tom and Andy can talk about them at greater length and in our discussion. But for one thing, we've completely abandoned the sense that the United States knows how to adjudicate difficult cases in an environment that involves politics and national security, and both are pressing. And that is not okay. The idea that the federal courts could not try these cases as Eric Holder wanted them to be tried, and as so many other prosecutors wanted them to be tried is not okay, it's undermined our justice system, but also the incredible lack of attention to human rights and to civil liberties that Guantanamo represents, which many critics talk about how that harms us in the world, I think it harms us at home just as much. And not understanding the ways in which Guantanamo speaks to the soul and the conscience of America is one of the lasting legacies of the place, and it also needs to close. And I guess finally what I wanna say is there is no perfect solution. We've known that for a long time, president after president has known this, I'm sure that Trump's sort of Trump stopped the process of whatever was going on incrementally at Guantanamo. It's now in Biden's hands to figure out a way forward. In the beginning of this administration, there were a number of cues that the military commissions would proceed, that the prisoners would be cleared for transfer and release. And what we've seen is a process that is all too slow. So the future should be quick, it should be brave, and it should be attentive to the larger legacy of what has happened to these individuals that we have harmed and to our systems of governance and our institutions that have also been harmed. Thank you, Karen. So, Andy, did you anticipate that you'd be still talking about this 20 years after you started working on it? It's been such a long time, hasn't it? Look at us all. We were so much younger then. And how truly appalling is it for the men still held at Guantanamo, that in so many cases, the only images we have of them are from the files that were released by WikiLeaks. And most of those photos date from 2006, 2007, 2008. Men who were in their late 20s then are now in their early 40s. And we don't even know what we look like. We have them kind of fixed in our mind as these young people. No, I mean, who knew? It was, as someone who was in Britain throughout the whole of the, I've always been in Britain, but in those early years when the Bush administration set the prison up, we were detached from any semblance of the rationale that the administration had. This seemed to be an administration that had taken the leave of its senses because of the damage caused by the 9-11 attacks. That the United States would set up an offshore prison beyond the reach of the US courts where it denied the only two ways that you are allowed to deprive people of their liberty in countries that claim to respect the rule of law. It seemed impossible. Those two ways are that you are charged with a crime and you are speedily put on trial. Or you are a prisoner of war protected by the Geneva Conventions. Everything that we are still suffering from today is as a result of those incredibly bad decisions that were taken by the Bush administration. We must not forget, there is no obligation for any of these men to be put on trial. There is no mechanism that exists whatsoever, whereby people can automatically in any way be released from Guantanamo. It comes down to what it has been about through almost the prison's entire history, apart from that two-year period when the federal court judges had the habeas cases and before the appeals court intervened to overturn their ability to order prisoners released. They are prisoners of the United States government, not of the law. They are prisoners of the president and of the Congress. When the judiciary has been involved in this and lawyers in all kinds of ways, and I absolutely do not mean people like Tom and the lawyers who have been fighting doggedly for 20 years to try and get these men their rights, but the legal system in the United States has failed them. Every single branch of the United States government has failed these men. What a profound source of shame for those who respect the institutions that were established in the United States. The same as the institutions here, the ones that are supposed to guarantee freedom from executive tyranny, that are supposed to guarantee legal fairness. Such a broken place that we have ended up in so sadly. And so that's what we're looking at now is men who are allegedly responsible for crimes that can't be properly prosecuted because the major commission system is so broken. And other men who were foot soldiers for the Taliban in Afghanistan before 9-11 happened or people who allegedly had some kind of lower level role within al-Qaeda or the terrorist organizations who are apparently held forever because the Geneva Conventions were torn up. So I hope what we're looking at really on this dreadful anniversary is just that time has run out for any justification. I'm very pleased that 99 lawmakers wrote to President Biden last year not only saying that he should close Grant's animal but pointing out that it is intolerable to have the concept of holding people forever without charge or trial. That means releasing 27 of the 39 men still held or somehow finding a way to charge any of those 27. I don't think that that's gonna happen if it hasn't happened over the last 14 to 20 years that these men have been held at Guantanamo. So release these 27 men, make that a priority and then we'll see how we can deal with the men who are genuinely accused of crimes and what is the best for them. And I'm sure later we'll talk about whether that's plea deals at Guantanamo or moving them to federal court. But one year into Joe Biden's presidency he has done almost nothing to show us that he feels anything about the urgency and that's what disappoints me because every day this prison stays open is a source of shame to people who respect the law. So thanks. Ken, over to you. Okay, well Karen and Andy have both said things very wise that I agree with. I think it does need to be done quickly and bravely with courage. Somebody needs to step in and do that. I think also Andy is absolutely right that the United States system and every aspect of it has failed here. And let me just go into that a tiny bit. I think it's important for people who don't know it well. There's 39 men still at Guantanamo. 12 of those have been charged in the military commission system. There was a great debate should be they be charged before military commissions or before federal courts which are quite capable of handling terrorist crimes. So it's important to know though I think that so the 39 men, those 12 are the only ones there who have been charged with participating in terrorism either engaging in terrorist acts or supporting terrorist acts. So that's a crime. Terrorism's a crime around the world. It's always been a crime. It's a crime internationally. It's a crime in domestic law. The question there is should they be tried before federal courts or until a military commission? And there were a lot of Republicans led by Lindsey Graham who said this is a war. We should treat them in military commissions. Huge mistake because they've been caught in military commissions which have been stymied have no rules really can try them. But there are the guys accused of be bad guys. The other 27 are not. The other 27 and it's so important and as Andy has pointed out to me of the 780 people who have ever been in Guantanamo only 16 were ever accused and not had the charges dropped of engaging in terrorism. The world has the view that Guantanamo is a place that holds terrorists 99%, 95% of them are never accused of terrorism. They're what we call these forever prisoners. There is a way to changes. The thought of it is that, okay, they're accused of being foot soldiers in the war in Afghanistan. That's what they were. Justice O'Connor and the Hamdi case said you can hold people under the laws of war if they're fighting against you in active combat. That's the whole rationale. And she said so long as US troops remain involved you can hold them. Well, that war is over. I mean, these people are being held in a war that's over. Now the government is saying, well, we continue to fight terrorism somewhere else, terrorists somewhere else. So we can continue to hold them. That's absurd. It's absurd. It's absurd as a matter of law. Okay, now what's the problem? Problem is that no one in the political branches has had the guts to step in and take this on to quickly and bravely close the place. At least for those 27 men still there and being held for fighting in a war that's now over they should be released. The Biden administration should step in and release them. The courts have been a joke too. I mean, you know, we won in the Rasool and Bamedian case. The idea that these men, you know, most of these 27 contend that they were not fighting in a ground war against the United States. And they've never had the chance to have a due process hearing to contest that. I have one guy now who, you know, I'm representing. I mean, I don't think he did anything. He was over there before the United States came in helping the Taliban. There's no doubt of that. He said, I never had any intention of fighting against the United States or anything that the allegations against him, he can't even see. So he's held without due process. For 12 years, the courts have allowed that to happen. They have diddled around and not made decisions. It's true there are some terrible judges but the others have sat there like this can go on. They don't care. And now the Biden administration, which has a lot of things on its political agenda doesn't consider this important enough to jeopardize them. What it shows really is the weakness in our system. I mean, these are guys, these are foreigners without a constituency in the United States. How do they measure up on the list of priorities before a political actor? They're very low on the poll. That's why it's important in our legal systems, the courts are supposed to be the protectors of individual rights and stand up for them. And they've been unwilling to do it. So it's a very, very depressing time. Let me just say one thing. Yesterday, my guy who was the lowest of low level, the accusations against him are so frivolous and small that even if they were all true, he's nothing. He was denied clearance by the prisoner review board because he's angry. Honest to God, because he's angry and they're afraid if they release him, he may be a threat to the United States. Why is he angry? He's angry because he has been held for 20 years, half his life without cause, without any basis. They said to him in this hearing, what are you gonna do? We want you to have a plan. Where are you gonna work? How are you gonna work when you get out? And he looked at them and said, and you can see, he said, you've deprived me of my liberty for 20 years. You've deprived me of an education. You've deprived me of any work experience. What do you want me to do when I get out? He's angry, so that's where he is. It's crazy. We need to step in in this country, like Karen said, do something quick and brave. A binder needs to stand up there and say, screw it. These 27 men that war is over, get them out of there. Then I think the other people, the 12 who have been charged, the military commission system is never gonna work. I mean, the lawyers who are representing them in the military commissions love it. They can challenge it all day. These guys should be brought to federal court and Eric Holder wasn't tough enough on that. You know, he doesn't stand up and Obama just backed down. That was a terrible decision. We should change it. People should have the guts to change these things and make the right. No, that's enough. Tom, what is the name of the person you're representing? Howard Casim. Howard, Q-A-S-S-I-M. Howard Casim. Can I ask each one of you, I mean, sort of from a, obviously these are essentially political decisions, not legal decisions at this point in a sense. And what's the lowest hanging fruit? Is the lowest hanging fruit saying, well, the argument that we couldn't try Ali Sheikh Mohammed in the Southern District of New York was clearly completely ridiculous because we've tried plenty of other people in the same courthouse and there's been absolutely no issue from a safety point of view, which was what the pushback was at the time. Do you sort of begin there? Because I think, you know, Americans must be puzzled like this guy was responsible for 9-11 by his own account in a freely given interview to Al Jazeera reported before he was captured. So, you know, the fact that he hasn't been tried, it's now 18 years after he's being captured, 19 years after he's been captured and he still hasn't seen the inside of a real courtroom. So Karen, maybe starting with you, which is, you know, I'm making this up but it's wrong claim or people in Biden's inner circle sort of saying, you know, basically why expand any political capital on this? Why hasn't this happened? So that does seem like something that would be easy to explain. You know, that's an interesting question because I think that for a while, I at least was hoping that, you know the quiet diplomacy presidency was really doing things behind the scenes but it doesn't look like that. There's no special envoy office set up. There's not enough movement on the trials. I mean, you asked about low hanging food and I'd be interested in what Tom and Andy think about this notion of taking the death off the table for the military commission so that there can be plea deals. That seems to me, I mean, if you're just thinking about very practical things that can go forward, that's one that's been suggested by a number of people inside the military commissions and outside of them. That's one, you know, I think possibility of what could happen. Also something interesting that happened and I'm so sorry about Haseem yesterday but there was a high value detainee clear yesterday and cleared for transfer. And that's actually very important because one of the things that's been hampering the release transfer question is, you know what are we gonna do with people who have been tortured who have been at CIA black sites and who might speak about it afterwards. This idea that, you know it can't be talked about afterwards was a beta being the most high profile of them. So that in and of itself is a signpost. And then I have other things to say but I'd like to hear from other people first. Annie? I can't even begin to tell you how profoundly disappointed I am by the decision of the PRB to approve the ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial of Khalid Khasim. Khalid Khasim is, you know as I learned from Mansour, Davey's unbelievable memoir Don't Forget Us here published earlier this year was one of the red eyes. He was one of the young Yemenis who fought like hell against the injustice and brutality of their imprisonment like Guantanamo and paid for it. You know, some of the men who died at Guantanamo under dubious circumstances were the red eyes were the people who they fought. They were not gonna take this lying down. They resisted with every fiber of their being the injustice that was needed out to them. Khalid is an extraordinarily talented artist in the art that he's produced when he's been allowed to in Guantanamo is extraordinary. Comparable, the only other artist comparable I think is Moaz who made these fantastic ships out of recycled materials and Moaz has just been approved for release. Finally, another one to join the list of people who are waiting in that, you know that airlock of do they get out to Guantanamo or do they have they just moved into another airlock? Is there ever an exit? But, you know, and Khalid has stood up for the rights of his fellow prisoners. He is everything about the alleged threat that he poses and why he's angry is about his imprisonment in Guantanamo. And, you know, I thought at some level what the Biden administration might be doing and it seems to be true is that, you know there's been a change of regime. There has been, there has been the notion that yet let's use the periodic review boards to approve people for release from the prison because that's the easiest way that we can do it. That way we don't, you know we avoid having confrontation with Congress. But, you know, it's still not working if somebody like Khalid still ends up being recommended for ongoing imprisonment. And we need to see action. We need to see these people released. So I don't know, is there a plan? It seems to me that there is a plan to the extent that we now have 15 men approved for release out of the 39 still held. And we desperately need to see movement on that. But all of these people need to be approved for release. If you're not gonna be charged you cannot carry on being held endlessly for whatever spurious reason it is. And so just briefly the other thing is the trials. The men who are facing the trials which is a profound disappointment to everybody concerned with justice that it's been nearly 20 years and that there have been no trials. Torture absolutely pervades everything about these cases, absolutely everything. The torture to which these men were subjected in CIA black sites. Having a death penalty case is difficult enough anyway. I've just been told my connection is unstable. Can you all hear me okay? Yeah. So a death penalty case is difficult. Death penalty should be taken off the table. It will make things easier. But you can't imagine the rabid Republicans going for that one, can you? Well, we aren't gonna get to execute these guys at the end of it all. So I don't know how that one's going to play out. It seems difficult now to imagine moving them to federal court. That should have happened under holder but taking the death penalty off the table, plea deals at Guantanamo seems to be the only practical way out of what otherwise means these men might never have trials. Who will that please? That will please the people in the CIA who don't want any information ever to come out about who did what and everything that happened. But it won't ever bring justice. For the victims of 9-11, it's been 20 years. Do you think that it's fair to them that they go through 30 years, that they go through 40 years, that eventually these guys die of old age in Guantanamo and there was never anything resembling justice? So, you know, there are a few options for the trials. There are no options for people who haven't been charged. That's what I think we all need to get behind. There are no more options. Release them. If you're not going to charge them, end this despicable experiments in indefinite imprisonment without charge, your trial, lifetime imprisonment without charge, your trial fundamentally. That's not what America stands for. This is what dictatorships do. It must be brought to an end. Tom? Let me, so I come down the same way as Andy. I think the quickest thing is not the people who were charged. You will have tremendous opposition from Lindsey Graham and others about getting them to trial in the U.S., although I think it should be done. It will be done eventually. I also think plea deals are sort of sleazy way out of a problem that we created. You know, if these guys should be tried, they should be tried. Sheikh Mohammed should be tried. And if he was tortured, evidence occurred through torture shouldn't be used, but he willingly admitted what he did and was proud of it. He could be convicted easily in any court. I think the key thing, the simplest thing, 27 men there have not been accused of engaging in terrorism. They are held on the law of war principle that you can hold somebody temporarily while you're fighting an active conflict and that they need to be released on the end of that conflict. That's a long principle. That's what the Supreme Court said in the Hamdi case. That's what the laws of war said. I think Biden tomorrow could say, look, our whole legal basis for holding them is over. They should be released and we're working to the release. Frankly, if he doesn't say it, the goddamn court should say it because it's a principle of law. The legal authority for holding these men has ended. And to say that it continues because you might fight a terrorist somewhere in Timbuktu is no, it just doesn't hold up under the laws of war. So that's the easiest thing to do, but somebody's gotta have the guts to do it either in the administration or in the courts to say this war is over. Look, the war in Afghanistan was over, the Afghan government before it fell released the prisoners. It's prisoners, you know, that's what you do. These people are not held as terrorists or supporting terrorism. Then we could deal with the others. And you know, the wrong thing as I say about Montanamo is that people concentrating, Carol Rosenberg is always writing about the people who were charged. They have been the minority in Montanamo. The real injustice of Montanamo is holding men who aren't charged forever without even evidence or a fair hearing to see whether there's a basis for holding them under the laws of war where they really fighters. Gotta remember, we now know that every Arab turned in over there for bounties was sent to Montanamo. I mean, a lot of those guys where there really were as charitable workers and they never had an opportunity to go through and say, what's the evidence against me? So that's the thing. And we should get rid of that right away. And it just takes guts. Yeah. So we have some audience questions. Let me start. Anybody don't jump in if you have an answer this. Why does the Pentagon continue to upgrade Montanamo? The capacity for Contanamo appears to be expanded. What's the maximum capacity? What was it 10 years ago? I don't know what's maximum capacity. I don't know those things. It's clearly been upgraded in certain areas. I was just down there. And I couldn't believe what it was like. You go into a facility that's so secure with razor wire all over and all these guards and battle dress and helmets and your face mask on, reading around a little guy like Khaled Kaseem through all these tunnels and everything who's not even in charge of being a terrorist. And there he is. And so they've spent a fortune. There are a lot of people down there all the time coming in and out, all these soldiers down there for these 39 guys, 27 of whom are nothing's. So I don't know how much they've spent but it's clearly over half a billion dollars a year. And a lot of the things we see are bureaucracy issues. For instance, they're upgrading things because a path needs fixing. So you get more concrete in to fix the path. There are more contractors down there. Somebody says, look, it's a pain in the ass to let these guys take their art with them. So a bureaucrat says, well, they won't take their art with them. It's a cruelty upon the cruelty but it's almost because it doesn't get attention. They really need someone in the White House to take charge of this and say, what the hell is going on? We had two versions of this question but it's going kind of similar to what the Chinese are doing with the Uyghurs. Obviously the scale is quite different but I mean, how would you compare these? I think that's an interesting question because it really puts America into the context of users of human rights which is what the basis of that question is. And in the name of ethnic religious reasons. I think Guantanamo is an abuse of human rights to that extent. Yes, I also think that the idea that because the state, the government says it so they can get away with it is also another comparison. I think the difference with Guantanamo is how much we now know about Guantanamo from some from the lawyers, some from the experts and researchers like Andy and what's amazing about the last couple of years and even the last year is the amount of exquisite detail about what's happened not just within the military commissions but also within the military commissions and also to the 27 that Tom and Andy referred to. And whether it's the Mauritanian, the movie The Forever Prisoner, the documentary the Don't Forget Us Here by Montserr Adafi, Guantanamo Diary which came out several years ago. We now know on so much more granular detail the amount of abuse that was heaped upon the 27 Forever Prisoners as well as the military commission prisoners that you really have to wonder and this is different than the Chinese context why this kind of exposure or if this kind of exposure will catch up with trying to have something done by the White House like Tom's been talking about. Another question which I don't completely understand but the panelists will understand. What are your comments on the CERL Gitmo Working Group? Recommendations, I don't know what that is. It's the University of Pennsylvania Center for Responsible Leadership report that they had a group of experts get together in the end of last year to come up with some recommendations. I think there are 13, which cover a lot of the things we've been talking about here and was just released. So I think a lot of people haven't had time to absorb it. So that's what they're referring to. So we're reading. Question about Julie Mistange. Will he be sent to Guantanamo? I mean, I think that's highly unlikely, right? I mean, no one has been, when was the last time a prisoner was even Trump who threatened during the campaign to send additional prisoners to Guantanamo did not? March of 2008. Yeah, that's right. It would be highly unlikely that any prisoner, anybody would be sent to Guantanamo at this point. No. I think no one's gonna be sent to Guantanamo. If Trump didn't do it and he was advised by people around him like, no, no, no, move on to something else, Donald. That's really not gonna happen. It shows how it is a poisonous legacy issue. This is not an active working prison. It's a pointless warehouse for aging men who, you know, it's so shameful, isn't it? Well, except that one of the greatest criminals against the United States in history is sitting there so many years, 20 years after 9-11 and has not been tried. So it shows the ineffectiveness of it and it shows the confusion of objectives. That's one of the reasons it's still there. There are some bad men there who should be tried, given the right to try it and punished if they are convicted. And then there are other people who are really nothing, never were anything and they're all combined together. And all of them were tortured. I mean, frankly, I get upset when I hear, you know, Carol talks in The Times about these people charged how they were tortured. The guys who did nothing were tortured. Every client I've had down there had the crap beat out of them, was hung from wires, you know, did that. So it's something we need to clean up. You know, let me just give one other observation. I've been involved so long. I didn't have hair. I don't think when I started and I said, but I really thought Guantanamo would be a temporary lapse in America's way of doing things based on, you know, fear and bad leadership at the time and turning to the dark side. And I thought like McCarthyism that we'd turn away from it and recognize the faults and how un-American it was. We are seeing now after Trump, so many problems. I mean, in the microcosm, Guantanamo was symbolic to me about losing our values. We have lost our values in so many ways and so many people don't care about our values. There's a real question when we talk about what does America stand for? It's a very different thing for different people. So it's become, you know, it's normal. It's the new normal and accepted. I mean, I went to New York with my twin 15-year-old granddaughters. They've never known in America without a Guantanamo and just scared me. So when we can talk about what America is, what it meant to us, but it might be a quite different thing today and that's what scares me most of all. But there is a chance for someone like Biden to stand up and as Karen said, to strangle up, be quick and brave. One more story, then I'll shut up. Colin Powell, who I got to know a bit actually in the Obama administration. I know him a bit before, but I remember talking to me, he said, he told Obama, don't back off from this. Just do it quickly. Do it quickly and bravely and it'll be over. And the problem will be gone. And he didn't do that. I mean, Obama backed down and went away and went on and really delayed it. And it became more of a problem when Congress came in. I think Biden facing all the things he is with the 50-50 Senate and things that he thinks are very important is afraid of going outside. He's making a mistake. You should do things that you can do and are right. You should just do them, get them done. And we just need to push him to do that. This is a sad thing. We have continued questions coming in. If you have a question, we're using Slido, which is at the right of the video and just put your question in there. But related to what Tom was just saying, after President Biden's Stonewall of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Guantanamo called by his own party members, where can we find hope? That's a hard one. Maybe the question should have been, can we find hope? Which is a little bit different. And I think with each passing day, we're less hopeful about what can happen. I just wanna say one thing. One thing we can find hope in maybe is that there's people like Tom, who have been on the front lines of defending these individuals, whether it's in habeas cases or at Guantanamo and the military commissions. And they just haven't stopped. And the amount of pushback and the amount of failure that's been for every good cause that they've tried to represent has been, it's unbelievable if you're just sitting on the outside reading through these documents and watching these cases year after year after year. And I think in the, there's something about the commitment of Tom and others to the basic principles of the Constitution and the rule of law that is really inspiring. And I know it's been a long and absolutely terrible odyssey, but there is some kind of hope in that we know there are people like this who will take on these causes and work forever to make things right. And I find hope in that. Well, I agree completely. And I'd add Andy to that list because Andy- Absolutely, absolutely. Who really, Andy and I have actually went to university together in the early middle ages. Reconnected. Before we both found our way into this particular area, Peter, which is so odd, isn't it? Who would have thought it back in the early ages? But Andy, an independent researcher in the United Kingdom was the person who really began piecing together who these people in, because I mean, it's hard for perhaps some of you was at this event to recall but it wasn't clear who was being held. I mean, this is a classic thing that dictatorships do, which is they tell people and they don't, there's no, they don't say they're holding them. But let me go to, because I think it important clarification. I think Karen, you might have said that there are 15 people who've been cleared or maybe that was Andy. But can we, so being, maybe it was that you Andy, but let's clarify a little bit what that means because being cleared for departure from Guantanamo can mean absolutely nothing, right? I mean, so what is it? Well, I mean, no, let's give this a context. So under Obama, 156 men were approved for release from the prison and all but three of them who were approved by his first review process ended up being released from the prison. He then set up a second review process, the periodic review boards and under Obama, 38 men were approved for release. All but two of those men left the prison, were released before he left office. So proving prisoners for release does work. You know, that's why there was a brief two-year period where the law actually counted that Guantanamo and prisoners had their habeas court petitions granted before appeals court judges overturned it. So since then it has been down to these administrative processes. Now, the problem is they're not legally binding, they're administrative and they can be ignored. But it has to give us, I think, some hope. The question, you know, previous question was about hope, that the process of approving men for release has resumed. And you know, there is nobody within the Biden administration who won't be vulnerable on the point of, you know, if any of them were to be asked, you can't, what do you think you're doing if you approve people for release and then don't release them? That's, you know, that's intolerable and cruel. It's not acceptable. So it must mean something that this is happening, I think. And especially when you look back on the releases under the last Democratic president. So, you know, that's what it's about, Peter. And so we've got 15 men. Now, some of these, you know, there were the five that were inherited by President Biden. And then the 10 that he has approved for release. So they, if they can be safely sent back home, then, you know, to their home countries, then it requires some sort of security arrangement. You know, we don't know. There is no official documentation about what, you know, the arrangements are ad hoc between the US authorities and where prisoners are going. It's more complicated for men who have to be found in third countries. So the Yemenis, for example, can't be sent home. Those are very complicated. And what we've seen from the past is that, you know, some of the men resettled in third countries. The deal that was cut between the US and the host country has played out very badly for them. And I know that, again, I know that Biden demonstration is aware of this. But sorry, Peter. Well, I was just going to ask Catherine, I'm just going to ask Karen if, you know, in her invaluable daily brief, you know, there was quite a discussion. Can you unpack, to use a terrible verb, a little bit, this person who's just being cleared for release, who was held in a CIA secret prison? Well, what's the significance and what do you think will happen in this case? As I tried to say before, I think the significance is, I'm always looking for the sign of something significant. So, you know, who knows? But the immediate significance seems to me, you know, amazing. And that's because one of the things about Guantanamo has been this absolutely imperative, that we are not going to release anybody who was tortured. Not that we don't have the Senate Intelligence Report with all the details about torture, even though we're still missing thousands of pages. Not that we don't have a number of memoirs that have come out. Not that we don't have other testimony that's come out. But all of a sudden there's a sense that if you were tortured in a CIA black site or if you were in a high value detainee, then you can be released from Guantanamo or transferred out of Guantanamo. The reason that's important is in the 27 that Tom referred to, one of the people who is considered, you know, Guantanamo would close except for this person is Abu Zabeda. And I see this as being pertinent to the Abu Zabeda because, you know, it was said written down by the CIA when he was interrogated early in the war on terror, really the first person to be interrogated in this way that we know of. What they said was, this person can never, ever, ever be allowed to be released because he can never talk in public. Some version of that I'm paraphrasing. And it's always been expanded to a sense that those who were tortured cannot, with enhancing irrigation techniques, cannot be let out. And so I see this as a major threshold is what you're asking and a turning point. But to Andy's point, you can clear people for release all you want until you actually figure out how to release them and take the steps need to release them and create an office with a lot of people in it, not just a couple of people that are making these incredibly complicated negotiations take place with other countries. You're lost in the process. And let me just say one other thing. You get that they can never come to the United States for trial or for any other reason. And so that's one of the issues here is that the United States has put the burden of this either at Guantanamo or on the rest of the world. And I just think that needs to be said. Okay, we have 30 minutes left. Peter, may I say something about this? Because I think the whole cleared for release thing is a past sort of format that doesn't work anymore. The whole idea was that we're holding a lot of people under, some people are charged and you hold them for trial. So they're properly held under law if they're properly charged. People who aren't charged are held as prisoners of war basically. But the war goes on and on. So the idea of the clearance procedure was a parole thing. Okay, these guys have been here, are they dangerous? Can you let them out? Okay, that's really all it was. Even though you can legally hold them as prisoners of war, now they were never given the hearing. But should you release them anyway? Well, two things, Obama delayed the thing so much that Congress came in and put severe restrictions on it. No one can be released the United States. Nobody can be released from Yemen. Most of people are from Yemen. No one can be released to Syria. You need to have security things. So it became a very complicated process. The process is absurd now. The war is over. There's no longer the legal justification to hold them in the first place. So then, and now they can get a habeas thing, say there's no legal justification. If you get habeas, you don't need to go through all that crap. You don't need it. So the whole thing really doesn't work. It's a, you know, look at this guy. They say that they say in this, Haled Qassim really did nothing wrong, but he's angry. So we're holding them. I mean, it's absurd. So now he doesn't get clearance, but a high value person who they think did something wrong gets clear now. You know, it's just a crazy system. It doesn't make any sense. I just wanted to mention that. And also Tom, you know, and Karen and Peter and everyone out there, two mid-level detainees, if you like. So ones who are held in black sites and were accused of being facilitators involved in al-Qaeda were also approved for release earlier this year. Not quite the significance of somebody who was, you know, the top, the top CIA black site prisoner, the high value detainees. Majid Khan, who, you know, worked with al-Qaeda, regretted it, you know, cooperated fully and has waited 10 years nearly since his plea deal. He's going to be released according to the terms of his plea deal in February. So we are still, and it makes it more absurd all the time when we look at the case of Khalid Qasim, who was a nobody in Afghanistan back when he was captured, but he's still detained based on his anger management issues. Yeah, anger. And let me say, Karen, this idea, don't release people who have been tortured. It's not so. I mean, frankly, is Abbas Aveda, is he not charged now? Is he not charged? Okay, well, let me tell you, the other people, the other people not charged, all of the people I represented who were released were tortured. I mean, brutally tortured. They were all released and they're back in Kuwait or so, you know, that's not thing, you know. No, I just meant the high value detainees who were, yeah, I defer to that. I also want to say one thing else about Tantam, is he makes me realize that we've all gotten caught into this conversation about what are the ways to go about this and what kind of deals? He's right. These guys are not, I just go away, go home. And the idea, and just look at what's happened in the Washington Post and the Guardian and the reprieve study this week, which talked about, you know, the United States being responsible for all the things that have gone wrong with these releases and transfers that they spent so much time working on, he's right. It's done, it's over. Let's go. It is over. Honestly, God, it's like we missed the big picture. It's over. The whole basis for holding these 27 is over. I mean, Karen, I'm going to send you the brief we have on file now, which is pending before the court, it's there. They just need to say, yes, you're right. There's no legal authority. That's what ABS means. You're going, is there legal authority to hold this person? There is no longer legal authority. It's as simple as that. Somebody needs to have the guts to say it. Yes. And yet what we have is a justice department that is prepared, you know, you have lawyers who are prepared to write briefs and stand up in court and say, oh yeah, but we know the military war in Afghanistan is over, but you know, but these guys were like, they were accused of attending an al-Qaeda affiliated guest house 20 years ago. So they remain an al-Qaeda affiliated threat. Ooh, they may have won 20 years ago, been in a training camp where Osama bin Laden came and made a speech to them. So therefore they are still somehow possible to be considered as active al-Qaeda threats. It is absurd. Well, you know, I'm going to send to the audience a question. Okay. We've got eight minutes left and want to get as many in as possible because this one's very pertinent to what you've just been discussing, which is, you know, in the case where home countries won't take these people, I mean, what's the process now for finding a place for these people to go or how does that work? Well, there's no official envoy. I know that somebody within the State Department's counterterrorism department has been flying around the world and seeing people in various countries. I saw that reported somewhere a few months back. Maybe then there is nothing official happening that can be particularly noticed and that below the radar, certain discussions are taking place. They know they got burned badly by what they did with the UAE. They sent a whole load of prisoners to the United Arab Emirates and the promise that after a period of rehabilitation, they would resume their lives. They were imprisoned in conditions at least as bad as what they'd left at Guantanamo. It was shameful. And, you know, and some of this was happening at the end of Obama's presidency. I don't know whether they knew or cared. Then we had four years of Trump where, of course, nobody cared about anything. But, you know, they want to be careful. But, you know, Oman took prisoners in before. I know from talking to former prisoners that life in Oman is okay. It's like, you know, they are able to see their family members. They are able to get on with their lives. I don't see that it can be that difficult. Can I say something from a legal standpoint again? This happens when you can't get habeas. The conditions on where you take people are when there's not a court order and you need to negotiate around the congressional restrictions to say they can't go to Yem and they can't go home. They can't do this. If there's a court order, they can send them home. So if the court says there's no longer legal authority to hold these 27 people, all that goes away. You know, I mean, it does. There's a simple way out of this. I mean, all the things we struggle with, that's, you know, and what I can't understand, you know, seven years ago or something, I said something at this. I said, the problem here is that the Obama administration, their Justice Department is asserting these crazy legal theories to keep people there put down by very conservative judges, by Judge Randolph, and they don't have due process. The government, you know, Obama's government, Holder's government asserted the worst, the worst legal opinions, almost like the torture memos to keep people on Guantanamo. Why? I don't know. At the beginning of Biden, we met with them, we put in things saying, don't do this. And they debated it. You know, let me tell you, if the Biden administration would simply say, I agree with you, the war is over. These people, and there's no legal authority for them, they'd be out. They have an easy way out of this under the law. They really do. I don't know why they fight it. So, excuse me, I'm just, it's so frustrating to me. It's there. Well, Karen, why do they fight it? That's the question we really should be asking because they have a way out of this. Some of them don't realize it. The Defense Department, you know, there was an issue when Biden came in. I mean, we raised it. We wrote memos into the administration saying, drop your argument that the people don't have due process. I didn't think the war was gonna end then, but drop that. And there was a debate within the government and most of the departments wanted to drop that argument, saying, yes, they have due process. What do we care? Let's give them due process. You know who opposed it? The Justice Department. They said it would make it more difficult for us to win our cases. Uh-huh. Of course it makes it more difficult and you don't need to show them the allegations against them. And it stopped. You know, that's what happened. This is craziness within the administration. There's a great story here. Yeah, I think that what happened with prior administrations and the Obama administration is particular was this absolute refusal to say, we're willing to see national security as not the primary concern. They wed themselves to that for a lot of political reasons and I think for a lot of their own beliefs and weren't willing to step away from it. And what happened with the habeas cases, which the Supreme Court wanted to set on an actual track where habeas cases would work, basically became a decision that was ineffective. And so I think that we're still in that mindset of national security. And I've noticed that a couple of the year end reports from 2021, including recent ones coming out of the administration have downgraded the terrorist threat in terms of the base, the real threats to the United States. And I just kind of wonder if that, it's late now, but if that in essence can change some of this conversation. And I think the notion of the sort of habeas just working which many have just given up on is actually something we're thinking about in this new context are what are the real threats and what costs are you willing to pay to embrace those threats above all else? Andy. I also think if I may that Tom made a very good point about a court order being something that a third country looking to take a prisoner in might look on much more favorably than what they get at the moment. What they get at the moment is the supposed intelligence files from Guantanamo full of all kinds of ridiculous allegations and assessments of the prisoners behavior. It's a terrible thing to be given when you're trying to find a country to take somebody in who needs to resettlement. A court order, I think is a very different thing, isn't it? Well, great. Well, you know, we've actually come up with a solution. Usually panels are very good at describing problems but less good about solutions. And I think that we all agree that there is a solution based on the war being over. I want to thank our distinguished panelists, Karen Greenberg, Andy Worthington and Tom Wilner. And hopefully we will not be having this same panel a year from now, but I'm not holding my breath, unfortunately. So thank you all and thank you from the audience. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks Peter. Thank you everyone.